List or Library Stucture?

chriskbinns — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:45:32 GMT

Design questions:

Situation:

We have projects that go through phases (business case, complete, implemented, validated, closed). At each phase, new information is added, and it goes through reviews/approvals. We need to be able to slice and dice the data in a variety of ways (demographic information and revenue produced by project).

First I started with a SP list – but abandoned that because InfoPath forms can’t feed repeating sections into lists. Each project needs to record multiple quarters/years of revenue, but the time frame for each is different.

Is there a way for one form to feed repeating revenue information to a library and demographic data to a list?

Then I built a form to feed a document library, but I can’t edit the data in SP datasheet view (read only because it is coming from an InfoPath form) – this means all of our previous project data (housed in Excel) can’t be copied and pasted in – we would have to manually fill out the form for over 500 historical projects.

Is there a way to populate old data into a SharePoint library that is also linked to an InfoPath form?

I am also struggling with permissions. As the administrator, I need to be able to make edits to info if we discover inaccuracies – which comes from the user. They need to be able to edit stuff, but it should re-route for reviews. Also, if we re-org and re-align the slice and dice structure, I need to be able to edit info but don’t want to reroute for review. We want people to be able to create and edit forms but be forced to go through a review process.

Is there a way to bind two fields (one is the old version of data – read only) and one is for updates to the same column in the library – show the newest stuff in the library table, but only after it has been reviewed/approved?

Ultimately, this would all be easier, if the form were populated independently by multiple users, but then only one person in my office had the ability to actually “submit it” – i.e. edit fields. Is that possible?

So, seems like many questions, and I am not looking for the technical answers to each here – I will learn how. This is a structure question, list or library? Is there a way to mix them? Like putting demographic stuff in a list (so it can be edited as necessary) but keep the revenue in a library or access database (something that can accept and sort repeating fields for summary reports)?

Newbie Questions

List or Library Stucture?